Private Equity
You might think it impossible to add any greater insult to the injuries of Bernie Madoff's clients, who lost much of their wealth through the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that he's been accused of creating. But now the New York Post reports that, more than three weeks after his arrest, his employees are still showing up to work everyday -- and collecting their paychecks. Every day, dozens of employees of swindler Bernard Madoff's firm report to their Midtown offices. They're still paid - but they do no work. The phones at Madoff Securities are turned off. The few computers that remain aren't plugged in. "It's pretty bad," one employee said. "We can't conduct any business. We basically get there at 9, hang around, and go home at 5. It's surreal. It's also scary, because we don't know what's going on. It's not known yet who knows what, and I'm sure many of his employees
1 min read · 04 January 2009
From the Wall Street Journal: Venture capitalists got squeezed by the financial crisis in 2008. That squeeze is likely to continue in 2009. Returns for these investors, who invest in start-ups with the aim of profiting when the companies go public or are sold, got crunched last year by a dearth of initial public offerings of stock and few mergers and acquisitions. The outlook isn't much brighter, as the recession is likely to continue to weigh on the IPO and M&A markets. Meanwhile, the venture industry's investors, such as pension funds or university endowments, were hurt by gyrating markets, crimping sources of funding. Some venture-capital firms are having a tough
3 min read · 02 January 2009
Unless you spent 2008 in a cave, you saw at least a minute or two of video-game designer turned world traveler, Matt Harding, goofy-dance his way around the globe in one of 2008's most-watched YouTube videos. (It's been viewed more than 17 million times.) In recent weeks, you might also have caught wind of accusations that Harding's now famous trek was little more than a Photoshop-enabled hoax. Harding has finally addressed those allegations in this new video:
1 min read · 01 January 2009
By the time children reach middle school, the socially-blessed ones rule the roost, while those who are shy, misanthropic, or otherwise deemed inferior get relegated to shabbier perches. Online social networks have successfully replicated these social hierarchies online. Now, SocialBomb, a startup out of NYU, is taking things a step further, leveraging both online and real-life relationships to develop mobile games that can amplify who's on top -- and who's not. “Runway Victim,” for example, awards or punishes players based on how their peers vote on the way they’ve dressed in their social network snapshots. According to an SEC filing, SocialBomb has already raised $240,000 of a $350,000 round. It's not clear if First Round Capital is an investor, but principal Kent Goldman (Yahoo's former director of corporate development at Yahoo) is named in the filing. The company also isn't unveiling its full slate of games yet; its site says they’re coming in the fall. But the very first game of SocialBomb -- which won NYU’s Stern Business Plan Competition last spring -- worked like this:
2 min read · 01 January 2009
3 min read · 30 December 2008
2 min read · 30 December 2008
2 min read · 19 December 2008
Recently, at the Keiretsu Forum holiday party, Nat Goldhaber, a venture capitalist with Oakland-based Claremont Creek Ventures, shared some of his 2009 predictions. As you’ll see in this video, a lot of them center on the Obama Administration (clearly, Goldhaber’s no Democrat). More specific to the industry, Goldhaber predicts the demise of the "Series B" round. As he tells interviewer Reena Jadhav, CEO of a free resume site called NuResume: “There will be A rounds and there will be C rounds, but there will be no B rounds." He goes on to say that in 2009, startups with technologies ready to be “taken to the next stage” are in deep doo-doo if they aren’t sitting on a stockpile of cash. “Give up your first born, give up 90% of the company, whatever you have to do to raise enough in the A round to carry it to the C round,” says Goldhaber to the HBS-educated entrepreneur, who very politely says of his soul-crushing counsel, "I think that's brilliant advice." Does anyone agree/disagree that the B round is a goner in the short-term? See this video on Vator.tv »
1 min read · 19 December 2008
1 min read · 18 December 2008
Often, around the holidays, investors like to send out a little something to colleagues and other acquaintances. For example, Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners (formerly known as IDG Boston), each year gives out a non-business book to its portfolio CEOs. This year, they’ll receive Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, which looks at the importance of teamwork in overcoming difficult situations. Accel Partners also sends out books -- or used to. I haven’t received anything from the firm since its 2005 move into China, when I was sent Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China by Peter Hessler. Perhaps I forgot to say thank you (it really is a great book).
2 min read · 17 December 2008
